Crown of Steel (Chaos Awakens) (17 page)

The assassin's apprentice gave one last wistful look at her knife. She'd have it back soon enough, but it had still been difficult to hand it over. "Alright, then let's do this before someone else comes along."

The watch captain gave a sharp nod of her head and then rounded the corner. Haley watched her carefully. As she fell into line with the corridor her arms were already moving, uncoiling like striking snakes. The blades spun from her extended hands in a blur of motion, and then Haley was rounding the corner ready to back up Kassa if it was necessary. Even as she stepped into the hallway it was clear that it wouldn't be. The knives had both found their marks. One was rooted to the hilt in the right eye socket of the guard on the left side, and the other was hanging from the throat of the man on the right. He was clutching at the wound and his throat was making an awful gurgling sound, but the blade had severed the main artery and his wind-pipe. He was moments from death.

"Leave the bodies." Kassa whispered, looking a little shaken by the violence she'd just committed. They gathered their weapons but did nothing else with the corpses. "Let's go." She was slinking quickly down the hall a second later, her dagger held firmly in her right fist. There were still two guards at the opposite end of the passage and there was no telling what was beyond that. Whatever happened though, they didn't want to be caught in the middle of the tunnel with just the two of them and no route of escape.

Haley followed the older woman's lead, watching and learning as they moved. They reached the other end of the hall quickly. The guards were standing just beyond the opening looking out in the opposite direction. Kassa moved up quietly behind one and gestured for Haley to do the same. She fell into place, the cold anticipation of the next few moments settling heavily upon her shoulders. Kassa nodded once and sprang into action, Haley followed suit. She didn't have time to watch Kassa anymore. She reached around the guards back, catching his mouth in the leather padded arm of her specially designed suit as she rammed the dagger through the back of his ribcage. He didn't have time to yell out. He barely had the time to gasp. He sighed into her arm as she pulled the dagger free and drove it back in once more. It wasn't an act of maliciousness. It was the act of an inexperienced assassin. She needed to be sure he was dead. She let him go and he crumpled to the ground. Kassa was watching her from the side.

"Be more confident in your first strike, it was very well placed, but you were right to be safe. Also, drop your arm to the neck instead of across the mouth. The arm of your suit might be padded in case of biting, but you can stifle an outcry far more effectively at the neck." Kassa instructed, sounding every bit like Xan in that moment. She seemed to notice this because she frowned slightly at herself. "Sorry, I just ..." She shrugged.

"It's alright." Haley replied, feeling a little ill as she looked down at the corpse at her feet. "Let's go. We need to find someone to get information from." Killing in the heat of the moment was easier than making a carefully planned strike. There was too much time to think about what she was doing.

With that they both slipped back into the shadows and began searching. Beyond the tunnel the architecture was completely different. Everything was made of solid stone and all the doors were made of heavy planked wood with secure locks. The facade of the outer house was put aside for the very harsh realities of a secure fortress. It didn't take them long to find more mages. There were groups of guards walking up and down the corridors. Not long after they'd entered the fortress the call to alarm went up. The bodies had been discovered. Activity along the corridors increased as more groups of guards began the search for intruders. Progression was only going to get more difficult.

Kassa popped her head around a corner and ducked back quickly. She held up a single finger and pointed around the corner. They'd finally found someone standing alone. Kassa gestured for Haley to stay in place, and then she slipped around the corner. A moment later a surge of magic slipped through the air and the sound of two people struggling could be heard. Haley rounded the corner just in time to see a ward spell vanishing and Kassa kneeling on the back of a mage with her blade against his neck. It only took the assassin's apprentice a moment to realize the man had been warded when Kassa had taken him down, but the older woman couldn't see the magic.

"You set off a ward." Haley warned as she approached her companion and the struggling man on the ground.

"Fuck." Kassa cursed loudly. "The man that was brought here last week with the tattoos all over his skin, where is he being kept?"

The man on the ground groaned as Kassa bent his arm backward at an awkward angle, but he didn't say anything between gasps of pain.

"Whoever set the ward will be here soon." Haley warned.

"You think your friends are going to come here and save you, and they may try to do just that, but if you don't tell me what I want to know I will kill you before they ever have the chance, do you understand?" Kassa's voice was heavy and threatening, it sounded nothing like Haley had ever heard it sound like before.

Haley closed her eyes and sent her magic senses out searching. The trail of the ward was already gone, but it had been tightly focused. They only had a matter of seconds left. She opened her eyes and settled back into the moment. Time was running out very quickly.

"I won't tell you anything." The man groaned. Haley walked over to him and stepped on his free arm at the wrist. She bent over, drew her knife, and slashed off four of his fingers.

"My friend will kill you, but so help me I will make you wish I'd let her kill you. Where is Xandrith?" Haley shouted. Her voice trembled with a mix of fear and rage. Kassa was looking at her with eyes wide in shock.

He screamed out, but between stammers he managed to speak. "Oh gods, the north wing! He's locked in the cells in the north wing you fucking bitch!" He spat and his hand threw copious amounts of blood across the hall as he thrashed about trying to tuck it in against himself. "You can't get in there, it's behind a garrison of mages. I hope they fucking kill you, you fucking ..." He didn't get to speak again because Haley kicked him in the head, ending his tirade in a mash of destroyed facial tissue. Footsteps were approaching from down the hall.

"Let's go." Haley said, not looking back at Kassa as she oriented herself and began to run. She didn't look back for Kassa, but she could hear the woman following after. Those mages would be on their trail fast. They couldn't risk taking any further time for stealth.

"How do you know we're heading in the right direction?" Kassa asked as they ran.

"I'm guessing. It feels like the right direction. We'll have to ask for directions as we go." Haley replied, not breaking her pace.

"Ask for directions?" Kassa didn't sound enthusiastic about the idea.

Haley slammed through a doorway using her shoulder to propel the door open, and the two women charged into a group of six mages on patrol. There was absolutely no time for hesitation. Both of them launched into attack. Haley remembered the technique for fighting mages and went immediately for any arms or hands she could sink her knife into. Kassa seemed to be doing the same, but with six mages it was impossible to get them all before a spell was readied. A ball of purple fire slashed through the air missing Haley by inches and smashing directly into Kassa's left shoulder. The older woman screamed as the flame flared around her, spreading across her skin like liquid.

On instinct Haley reached for the spell caster with her own power. She could feel the link between him and the magic flames crawling across Kassa. She grabbed his magic and turned it back against him, pulling the lines of power back into his own body. The fire on Kassa flickered out and suddenly the man's eyes bulged with purple light as his blood burst into flames. His body tore itself apart. The fire split him at the seams and sent him crumpling to the ground in hissing, crackling flames. Haley couldn't turn it off. The fire kept burning until the man stopped moving and then it flickered out as though it were a flow of water that had been blocked. The few mages still standing were looking on in horror, but Haley knew she didn't have time to be shocked. She struck quickly at the remaining guards, gutting one and slamming the other to the ground.

"Where are the north wing cells?" She asked, her voice colder than she felt inside. She was awash with fear and more than a little terror at what she'd just done. The way she was using her magic wasn't the way Johndin had described the process at all. She wasn't really shaping spells or controlling anything. She was just tampering with the power of others. It was frighteningly effective, but she'd never been told of anything like what she was doing.

"Follow the corridor to the left, take the second passage that comes up on your right, and then keep going until you reach the double doors. The cells are through there, but the garrison is housed there as well. Please ... please don't kill me." The voice was that of a young man, maybe just into his late teens. Haley hesitated, not sure what to do. He was an enemy, and she didn't need to have an enemy at her back, but he was so young.

And if you hadn't outmatched his group, he would have happily ended your life and taken an award for doing it as well.
Haley took a deep breath and slid her dagger through the front of his chest. He died with little more than a groan. She stood up and immediately went to Kassa who was just getting back to her feet. She was burned, though not as badly as Haley had at first feared.

"Are you alright?" Haley asked, her eyes scanning the other woman carefully. Haley knew only too much about the pain of burns.

"I think I'm going to be. The fire wasn't as hot as I'd thought it might have been, but when it started to spread I panicked." Her clothes were scorched and burned all the way through to the skin, which was red and sore looking beneath, but she looked like she would recover without any permanent scars.

"Come on then. I know where we need to go." Haley took the lead again. She wasn't sure when the dynamic had changed between them, but suddenly she felt like she needed to be the one going first. She could see the wards, and Kassa seemed too hesitant to do what needed to be done sometimes. Haley thought she knew why. Her older companion had been a guard before falling in with Xandrith. What she was doing now was the exact opposite of how she'd always lived her life before. She wasn't really ready to take the roll of the assassin, though she had all the necessary skills within her. Haley wasn't sure she was ready to be an assassin either, but she was at least able to push herself to do what had to be done to save Xandrith. There was no turning back for them. They'd come too far and done too many unforgivable things to go back. If the mages caught them they'd be dead. There would be no redemption.

She followed the dead mage's directions at a full run until she reached the large double doors that marked the entrance to the main garrison. She stopped as she drew close, placing her hand on the door as though that might give her some indication of what was beyond. To her surprise the door swung inward at her touch. It had been unlatched. Haley recoiled in horror as unsuspected sights and sounds flooded her senses. War. The garrison was already at war, and it wasn't with Haley and Kassa, or with Xandrith.

Massive hulking creatures stalked amongst the mages, bodies ranging from a few feet taller to twice as large as any man. They were hunched at the shoulder with skin that was a strange mix of black and red. The creatures had elaborate sets of horns rising high from their heads and eyes that burned fiercely orange and yellow. Those eyes were piercing fires that seemed to see far too much. Some of them had at least four arms stretching from their distended torsos and their hands ended in devilishly hooked fingers. Their faces were long like a horse’s and hinged too far back, but somehow still vaguely human. Their bottom jaws hung agape except when they snapped them closed on an unsuspecting mage’s arm, snapping the limb as easily as a man could break a dried twig in his hands. Fireball spells exploded off of their hide and rolled form their skin and to the ground as easily as water rolled from treated leather. Trolls bigger and fiercer than the one they'd met in the woods, Haley recognized.

"Trolls." Kassa gasped as she too recoiled in horror at the sight before them.

The word alone made Haley look down at the axe on her hip. The bonesteel weapon seemed to exude power in the presence of its kin, though it did not so much as whisper to Haley as she stood transfixed by the horror before her. Seeing one had been terrifying, but that one had been small and unobtrusive compared to the ones in the room beyond. Opening the door hadn't garnered them any extra attention. The room was filled with combat, and the door swinging open hadn't changed the combat dynamic. Haley took a small moment to gather herself before speaking. "We need to get to Xandrith, quickly."

Kassa nodded her head once, but she didn't look confident. How were they going to get through the chaos in front of them? The main room of the garrison had been some kind of meeting hall, but now it was a battlefield. Every hallway and stairwell exiting the room was plugged with men and trolls battling to the death. The trolls were obviously winning, but the mages were at least holding them for the time being. Haley pressed forward into the room doing her best to avoid the major areas of conflict. She knew it would be impossible to move unseen through the chaos, but she could at least attempt not to draw any extra notice. Kassa stayed close at her back and she was a welcome presence in light of the horde of trolls. Haley made her way carefully towards the main exit from the hall. It seemed like the best course to take when looking to get out of the garrison area and into the cells beyond. Side corridors would probably lead to other parts of the garrison, and they seemed to be the most heavily conflicted areas.

The mages were fighting for all their worth, throwing spells and physical weapons into combat against their massive troll antagonists. The mages didn't even have time to look at Kassa and Haley as they slipped through the room. As long as they didn't pose a threat, the mages had enough to deal with. Strangely though, the trolls didn't seem directly interested in them either.